2Used to craft
Work Bench
Mythril Anvil
Bookcase
the drop is gated on depth, not just biome
Standing in the Hallow is only half the requirement. The kill has to happen in the cavern layer or below, which is why people who farm the surface Hallow come away empty and assume something is broken. Anything that dies down there counts, including enemies with no connection to the biome, so a Granite Elemental caught inside a Hallowed cavern pays out the same as a native. Remix and Zenith worlds drop the depth rule entirely and let any layer work.
what can never drop one
- Statue-spawned enemies and anything a boss summoned. The rule of thumb is that if it would not leave a coin behind, it will not leave a soul.
- Anything with a single point of maximum health, which covers spores, fungi and similar filler spawns.
- Bosses themselves, Meteor Heads, winged Slimers and one specific group of slimes.
That first line is what ruins builds. A statue farm is the obvious way to automate a material and it is the one setup that produces nothing at all here.
the farm that does work
Underground Hallow enemies are ordinary in the way that matters: they walk, they do not pass through walls, and the Enchanted Sword is the only exception. Dig a corridor deep enough that lava is already common, run a shallow lava trough along the floor, and place a couple of Water Candles nearby to push spawns. The lava does the killing and you collect. The same trench harvests everything else the biome drops, so it is worth building properly rather than treating it as a single-material trip.
farm past what you think you need
The crafting tree running through these is long, and the boss summoning items and the Key of Light sit on top of that pile rather than inside it. Later additions like Cool Whip and the Sky Fracture pushed the total higher again. Staying an extra ten minutes on the first trip costs less than coming back twice.
two small things
Dropped souls ignore gravity. They hang in the air where they were released, which makes them easy to spot over a lava trench and means a kill over open space does not lose the drop down a shaft. Expert worlds used to roll a second independent chance at one, which was removed, so difficulty no longer affects how fast you gather them.